Hitler’s Childhood House: Austria Looks To ‘Expropriate’ Hitler Birthplace If Owner Won’t Sell
The house where baby Hitler was born, and little-boy Hitler spent his early years, has become a point of contention for Austria, where the childhood Hitler house is located. According to Austrian officials, they seem to have reached an impasse with the owner of the childhood Hitler house, and are seeking a way to “expropriate” the property — which is government speak for seizing the Hitler-connected property from its owner.
Exploring how to expropriate the childhood Hitler house is Austria’s latest move in a long battle with the little-boy Hitler home owner, who has recently denied requests and suggestions from the Austrian government for what to do with the place, reports Fox News.
What Austria doesn’t want to happen is for the bastion of Hitler’s youth to become a destination for Hitler fans that carry out Nazi pilgrimages and turn the house into more of a Hitler shrine than it is already.
The Hitler house, located in Braunau, Austria, which sits on the border with Germany, is frequently visited by many neo-Nazis. Officials of Braunau hope to change this reality to avoid Hitler’s childhood home from ever becoming like other neo-Nazi Hitler destinations.
Among those neo-Nazi Hitler gathering destinations is Wegmacher Chapel, outside Salzburg, which was reportedly built in 1997 using stones from Hitler’s World War II retreat, the Berghof in Berchtesgaden, where Hitler did much of his planning for world domination.
Locals around Wegmacher Chapel were not pleased when skin heads in leather jackets began arriving at the chapel to praise Hitler, leaving behind notes, swastikas, and lighted candles to celebrate Hitler’s memory.
The stones used from the terrace of the Berghof were also reportedly carved from the quarry by Jewish slaves from Hitler’s Nazi concentration camps, making the chapel as a shrine to Hitler all the more offensive and wrong.
So, in an effort to avoid Hitler’s childhood home becoming a similar destination, Austria is hoping plans for expropriation are ready to proceed by the end of the month if the owner of the Hitler house turns down Austria’s final offer to buy it.
Austria’s Interior Ministry has been renting the little-boy Hitler house for several years to keep it from becoming a neo-Nazi haven, or being “misused,” reports the Boston Herald. In that time, the Hitler house has been used and occupied by different charitable organizations but has now been empty for three years since a workshop for the mentally disabled moved out.
The woman who currently owns Hitler’s childhood home has not been identified, but local Austria officials say she put a stop to bringing in a new charity and a school last year because she didn’t like the proposed renovations that would come with them.
Austria officials claim expropriation is the “last option” they want to pursue, alderman Harry Buchmayer indicating Wednesday that they’ve simply run out of other options.
“We’ve tried very hard to find a solution… But she does not seem ready to cooperate.”
Austria has hoped the owner would finally agree to sell them the Hitler house, but she has reportedly passed on all previous offers.
[Images via Google Images]
